I used to live in the US where I went to various gaming cons and played wargames, RPGs, euros, Go, etc for many years. I hosted a weekly gaming group RussCon from 1998 to 2005 in Austin, TX.

I moved to Wrocław, Poland on 2005-12-19, where I live with my wife Anna (user a2na). We professionally translate Polish games to English (and occasionally vice-versa).

These days we typically play shorter 2-player combinatorial games and eurogames almost every day at home, as well as similar games with other folks. I'm also playing wargames again. There's a nice growing community of boardgamers in Wrocław, and the boardgame scene is growing rapidly in Poland generally.

Anna and I enjoy playing a game each day with a different theme each month.

:Game Ratings: I only started rating games played since moving to Poland, with no attempt to retroactively rate the hundreds of games I'd played in the past. I simply follow the recommended BGG scale. I see nothing wrong with rating a game after one play and modifying the rating up or down after more plays (usually my initial impression is accurate within +1/-1 anyway).

Games Played: I started logging plays on 2007-01-01. On 2009-12-12 I decided to stop logging expansions and only log the base game.

Geek Buddies: Generally my geek buddies are people I know in real life from outside BGG. Feel free to add me or delete me, with or without telling me; I don't read any deep significance into it.

"When playing a game, the goal is to win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning" - Reiner Knizia

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I speak Esperanto (which my Polish wife Anna and I use as our primary language; we met at an Esperanto event in Helsinki). Esperanto is much nicer and easier to learn than national languages like English or Polish. If you want to learn Esperanto, I highly recommend lernu.net, and I'm happy to help too. Esperanto estas tre plaĉa, kaj ĝi ne tiel malfacilas, kiel aliaj lingvoj.

I am learning Polish since I live in Poland, and unfortunately most Poles don't speak Esperanto... If you want to learn Polish, I recommend having been born in Poland, or abandoning all hope. Język polski jest trudny ale ciekawy!

I've been vegan since 2005 and vegetarian since the mid-1980s, primarily due to the serious environmental damage of modern animal agriculture and due to not wanting to personally contribute to pointless animal suffering, and secondarily for health reasons.